Read Online Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey - Free Book Online Page A

family—there were always stories about her cousin in Torquay and her sister in Doncaster—but things about the town, about the war. It seemed you could find anything out by telephone, and I wondered who it was she spoke to and how she remembered all the information. She rang lots of people for us when Sukey disappeared, always telling my mother to keep her spirits up, and sometimes I’d come home from school to find her in the kitchen with Ma, drinking tea and passing on crumbs of hope, and I would sit and listen, too, refilling the teapot when Ma asked.
    I put my notes aside and make a pot of tea now. I don’t do this very often, as tea is quite tricky. But this time I remember to warm the pot and put in just three spoons of tea. As it’s only for me. I carry it through to the sitting room and put it on the coffee table, curving my sleeve-covered hands around it for warmth. Steam rises from the spout and clings to the underside of my chin. The feeling is so particular, so familiar, and yet I can’t think what it signifies. I try not to move, hoping the meaning will curl into my mind, but all I can think of is Dad putting something in the outside bin.
    I’ve brought the tea cosy which Elizabeth gave me into the sitting room, but I never usually use it. I’m afraid it’s rather ugly, and bits of wool come off and get into the tea. It begins to feel like drinking a cloth pulp. Elizabeth’s own tea cosy is similar, but she has somehow managed to stop the wool from shedding. “I’ve drunk the excess wool away,” she told me. “It’s probably expanding inside my internal organs.” I make her a pot of tea whenever I’m at her house and she reminds me how to do it if I get lost halfway. She says it’s a luxury for her, as she’s too weak to lift the teapot herself now. Her carers sometimes make a pot, but they never stay long enough for her to drink more than one cup, and she can’t refill it after they’ve gone. And of course Peter never gets her anything. He just comes in, dumps her shopping, and leaves.
    Elizabeth tells me he barely says a word to her and spends most of the time in another room. The kitchen or greenhouse. It’s cruel, when she’s stuck in the house all day and what she wants most is company. And then she said something recently. Something about him lying to her. There were things going missing, and then he lied. I wish I could remember the details. I pick up my notes again: Elizabeth all right says son . Somehow I don’t feel reassured. I fetch the tea cosy and put it on, fitting it neatly over the pot, no wrinkles. I don’t care about the shedding. It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning and I’m not drinking the tea anyway.
    There was a lot of not eating and not drinking in the weeks after Sukey disappeared. And a lot of not talking, too. Ma and Dad barely spoke in front of me, but I overheard bits of their conversation when they thought I was out of earshot. The word “police” came up a lot.
    One Sunday we were sitting at the kitchen table, not eating lunch and not looking at each other, the light beginning to dim outside, when Dad got up.
    “Come on,” he said. “We’ll go and ask the neighbours.”
    He swung his jacket on to his back and held the kitchen door open for me. I remember looking at Ma still sitting at the table; she didn’t turn to watch us go. She had already spoken to Sukey’s next-door neighbour, a woman who used the same greengrocer as us, but all she’d had to say was that there were some funny types around nowadays.
    “You never know, someone might know something,” Dad said as we jogged along towards Sukey’s road.
    The laundry had its doors open and there was something almost heady and luxurious about the scent of the soap. But it was a false smell, and somehow it made Sukey seem further away. We began at the house next to Frank’s yard. Dad knocked on the door, and it opened quickly, as if the man had been standing behind it. A head poked out: